Selling to Big Companies

Selling is tough in general and selling to Big companies have often been tough. However, at the end of the day normal people are involved in any business and and some of them happen to be working for big corporates. You do need to know that during any conversation you must be able to add certain value to the participants, which the participants shall also be able to see as value add. As long as you respect that there is a person sitting at the other end and he / she would like to be treated as a normal person, selling will be fun as well.

In this article, I will be primarily writing my notes from the book, Selling to Big Companies. However, I will add more input as and when I learn new things.

Key Learnings

1. Corporate buyers are increasingly immune to even the slightest hint of self-promoting puffery by salespeople
2. In any meeting, including phone call, any salespeople make sure that there is enough in it for the prospect, which will lead to sense of fulfilment and positive next steps
3. Don’t try to be friend of decision makers
4. While “people buy from people” stays to be universal truth, ensure that every meeting has a value for the corporate decision makers.
   1. First, you need to prove your business value, demonstrate your worth, and make a difference
   2. Socializing shall be limited to social gathering
5. Don’t expect corporate decision makers to tell you about their business
   1. They do expect you to do your ground work and come prepared – there are tons of information available on the web
   2. You must get yourself fully grounded about their business, industry, market trends, objectives, customers, competitors, and challenges – prior to initiating contact. Well this whole thing looks overwhelming – but they do expect you to do basic homework.
6. The value proposition that you offer – must be VERY EXPLICIT and LOUDLY CLEAR.
7. Today you identify the company (target market) with which you want to work and then make it happen
8. You should target 10 – big companies to work with in a given year
9. While networking you must go to places where your key decision makers will most likely go. Industry specific events may often be more useful for IT Services companies than the regular technology events.
10. Deal with the stumbling blocks (tough objections) before they happen rather than recovering from them after they occur

Facts

• Large corporations often look for outside resources to bring in fresh perspectives and better values
• Phone remains the primary tool to get your foot into the door of a big company. The other means are definitely supplementary

Foot-Step-Into Big Companies

• Make it as easy as humanly possible to get your initial contract
  • The best way to get into a big company is to identify a unique & urgent problem and solve that problem for them – even if that problem may not be the best thing that you would enjoy!
    • Remember, you still need to figure out decision maker, define value proposition of your solution and define customized “getting in” strategy
    • While proposing the solution, be selective and stay focussed on the immediate offering and corresponding value proposition instead of talking about your entire portfolio
• Persist with your positioning as sometimes it needs a catalyst / trigger to open the door for you
• Learn from your existing customer about why did they let you into their door

Key to Target Market Identification

Clearly defined target market is key component in ensuring the effectiveness of sales process. Some of the key points you must note are:

1. Define your ideal customer
2. Know the Demographic Facts like – Industry, Revenue, number of employee, global or local presence, technology stack, process, their customer, development / current stage
3. Know the Psychographics – vision and values, character and ethos, commitment to people / customers / environment, reputation in industry, management priorities
4. Know the Enabling Conditions – challenges, issues, problems, goals, objectives, strategic imperatives

If you don’t identify target market then everyone looks like a customer.  Be the specialist, keep developing your expertise, and look for ways to grow your business within your segment. Don’t be everything to everyone – walk away from the business which is not in your focus area!

I truly liked following statements:

“Claim your target market now. Own it.”

Know your Value Proposition

Often we don’t talk about Value Proposition and we give a lot more importance to stuffs like Elevator Pitch / Speech (what do you do – service / product and target market) and Unique Selling Points (how do you differentiate).  Point is that the Elevator Speech and USP are just information – you are still leaving it upto people to put required effort and derive a sense (Result) out of that (Your Offering) to be able to give you a business.

As part of Value Proposition – you shall be able to clearly and loudly communicate tangible (numbers, percentage, time frame) value, intangible (risk, reputation, compliance, etc) value and opportunity cost. It shall be so enticing that when prospects hear they should say – “I need to learn more”.

Bottomline is that the clear and powerful value proposition ensure that you know that your product / service adds serious value to your customer. It opens door quickly, customers understand this easily and you make more sell!

Jill Konrath recommends following guidelines for coming up with strong value propositions

• Talk outcomes, not products or processes
• Tie results to critical business issues
• Use business terminology
• Include metrics or statistics
• Refer to actual client successes

Consider following steps before concluding the Value Proposition

1. Talk to your existing customers and understand why did they choose you and how you are helping them
2. Capitalize on your collective wisdom by brainstorming with your experienced colleagues on tangible value provided by us
3. Leverage industry statistics and speak in business terminology
4. Test your value proposition

AND, have metrics to measure your value proposition.

Do your research

People do talk about Sales Funnel. While the funnel does give you a feeling of tangible results – the fact is that its quality matters a lot. Lack of appropriate research would mean a lot of time being wasted at different stages and net cost of acquiring the customer become really high.

The internet, combined with media, private sites (available on subscription), trade events, networking, etc provides you an opportunity to know more about your prospect. This is what removes the “Coldness” from the “Cold Calls”. As part of your research you must

• Find a point of entry into an account
• Learn more about their business (industry trends, events / changes,  issues, initiatives, competitors, customers, decision makers)
• Search for Openings – problems and opportunities
• Understand the lingo being used
• Watch for the triggering events

 

Understanding Decision Makers

Challenges you may face while reaching the decision makers:

• The corporate decision makers are often too busy fighting urgent items and they might not see a value in your offering – the moment they have to derive any value
• They might involve multiple people and have multiple meetings to mitigate their risk and ensure their ROI within 12 months
• They might see a new vendor / process to be exhausting because of the things (contract, negotiation, processes, etc) involved in it
• They might brush you off. However, if you do have strong value proposition then use provocation around business issue and the ramifications of their operation

While above challenges stays to be your concern, the biggest challenge is to know who the decision makers could be. Some of the common challenges you would face are

• In a larger corporate you often see Vendor Manager or HR Managers to be in the buyer’s position and they look like a clear decision maker from outside. Fact is that they always force you into competing for price without considering your value proposition.
• You may be engaging someone else to identify the decision makers and you may be required to “clearly describe the people with whom you would like to meet”
• Technology has been changing the landscape and hence there is always a question regarding which channel would work best in reaching to the decision maker. Cold call and cold emails are definitely being looked down in the fraternity, however, these two tools are still the dominant ways to be able to communicate with someone

While none will give a ready made solution to these challenges and problems, the remedy does seem to be doing the basic things right. Some of them are listed below

1. Don’t mix research with sales
2. Don’t lie to anyone
3. Don’t disrespect (even in your mind) anyone
4. Be creative and use common sense
5. Use different resources together – i.e. combine
   1. your research
   2. networking (LinkedIn, Spoke, Jigsaw, Ryze, Ecademy, etc)
   3. with the standard tools like calls and emails. Don’t expect network to do hard work for you!
6. Show patience and build on your previous work with the identified decision makers
   1. Never try to convince prospects that you have a great solution. Instead use questions to demonstrate your deep understanding about their problems / concerns
   2. Do write / communicate as if you are communicating to a peer
   3. Think every contact as new opportunity to communicate different aspects of your value proposition – based on customer’s goals / objectives / issues and penetrate the decision maker’s consciousness
   4. Use multifaceted campaign (phone, email, mailings, faxes, etc) and be ready with your toolkits (voice mails, telephone scripts – actual person, obstacles handling guide, etc)
   5. Typically be ready for 8-12 contacts. As an idea you can think of contacting the decision makers through – success stories, white papers, special reports, guidelines / tips, relevant articles, invitations, newsletters, books, free samples, etc AND build your image as an expert in your area
      1. After 12 contacts, you may like to move them into monthly / quarterly contact list
   6. Create enticing voice mail messages – by including important informations (industry trends, their customers, the marketplace, their competitors, new technologies), insightful ideas, your referrals, trigger events,
      1. Multiple messages would be needed
      2. Keep verifying the quality of your message by putting yourself into decision maker’s shoes

When contacted by the decision makers

Avoid being caught unaware by the decision makers. Make use of system which enables you to quickly retrieve the details about that specific decision maker.

Making a difference

Today sales is about establishing a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship.  Unlike past, today’s sales model expect more proactivity and expect you to differentiate yourself through actual ground work. You need to continuously think about how you can help customers improve their business. They are successful by

• being the change agents (for the success of the customers) – proactive as well as provocative
• creating values during every interaction – make them feel that their time was well spent
• increasing their knowledge & expertise and demonstrating the same

The products, services, etc are just tools. Note that the customers are focussed on issues / challenges they face in their business and that is where you must focus – rather than your offering and products.

The decision maker do want your brain on their business and think about their problems, how will they use your solutions, alternates that they have, in general things happening in their industry and other similar customers, etc.  They do want you to differentiate through your experience, which will be unique even if someone else comes up with similar services / products.

The customers are definitely looking for following:

Your Expertise + Your Offering = Business Improvement 

However, if you are in services, customers are also looking for a great experience as a person.

Transform Opportunity into Business Relationship

Once you have been able to get appointment with decision makers, the next obvious step is to convert this into a long term business relationship. Any relationship will be long term when both the parties manages expectations appropriately, contribute to each others business for a longer duration and are able to have a good experience and healthy conversation.

DON’Ts

• Don’t vomit everything that you wanted to talk about
• Don’t make the conversation look like an interrogation, even though you may want to learn more about prospect, you still need to establish a credibility of knowledgeable

DOs

• Remember the strategy which enabled you to get your foot in the door and build your conversation on top of that
• Discuss business results – how you helped your successful customer to resolve their ongoing problems and what was the impact of that help
• Expand Insightful Ideas (from research, learning from other customers, knowledge of prospect’s business) – present the ideas like possibilities rather than the best solution
• Provide Important Information (about their industry, marketplace, customers, and competition) and share their origin as well
• Engage in Questionable Practices – ask well thought (increases your credibility), well planned (shows your concern and effort) and thought-provoking (help customer think, assess and remove vagueness) questions, which might lead to shaping up of the right solution owned by the customer and hence a stronger relationship and a lot more businesses.
• Have a good list of questions
  • Find out about current situations
  • Get a handle on their problems and gaps
  • Explore the business impact
  • Determine the value of change
    
• Have a good sales meeting plan
  • Open the Conversation (5-10 minutes)
    • Make the Introductions
    • Confirm times and agenda
  • Lead the Discussion (40-45 minutes)
    • Set the stage (5 min)
    • Transition to questions
    • Focus on business issues (35-40 minutes)
  • Advance the Process (5-10 minutes)
    • Summarize your understanding
    • Suggest the logical next step

Account Entry Toolkit

1. Target Market Identification
2. Past Customer Analysis
3. Offering Assessment
4. Personal Credibility Appraisal
5. Clarifying Your Value Proposition
6. Top Ten Targeted Accounts
7. Voice Mail Script Template
8. The Voice Mail Evaluator
9. Sales Call Planning Guide

Precautions

1. While the bigger company does provide exponential growth opportunities, if you are just relying on one or two such contract then it can be devastating overnight. While the later part is true based on your business exposure to any business, the likelihood of first part being true is more when you do business with bigger companies and perform well.
2. The contract in big companies may get impacted due to various reasons – arrival of new management team, shift in philosophy, merger and acquisitions, sheer arrogance, etc.

References

• http://corporateinformation.com/
• http://www.jillkonrath.com/sales-books/selling-to-big-companies
• http://www.jillkonrath.com/sales-resources/worksheets
• http://www.thomasnet.com/